Flow ghost artifact in slice-encoding direction mimicking vestibular schwannoma in contrast-enhanced 3D spoiled gradient-echo sequence.

The value of MR imaging by post-contrast T1-weighted 3D spoiled gradient-echo (3D SPGR) is well established for the detection of small vestibular schwannomas in the cerebellopontine angle region. We describe a case in which a flow ghost artifact in the slice-encoding direction mimicked a vestibular schwannoma and heavily T2-weighted MR cisternography and multiplanar reconstruction images helped us to reach the correct diagnosis. In addition, we conducted a volunteer study to demonstrate that changing the k-space trajectory can reduce this artifact in post-contrast 3D SPGR images.